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Add FightsATW on GoogleGaslighting, belts, and billions—boxing’s power struggle has rarely been more openly on display, and WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman is once again at the center of it.
The latest flashpoint follows Oleksandr Usyk’s announcement on Friday, when the undefeated unified heavyweight champion and future Hall of Famer confirmed he will vacate his WBA, IBF, and WBC titles. Usyk explained the move as part of his plan to allow other fighters to compete for the titles as he enters what he described as a “last dance” before retiring from the sport.
On the surface, the decision is both practical and personal. Usyk is nearing the end of an elite career—one that already places him among the most accomplished heavyweights of the modern era—and has clearly earned the right to decide how it ends.
But the economics behind the belts tell a more complicated story.
In professional boxing, each of the four major sanctioning bodies—the WBC, WBA, IBF, and WBO—collects a percentage of a fighter’s purse when a title is on the line, typically around 3%. At Usyk’s level, that adds up quickly. A 3% fee on a $45 million purse equals $1.35 million. Multiply that across multiple belts, and the total could exceed $4 million before a single punch is thrown. There have been instances, such as title unifications or fights with big purses, where the sanctioning organizations have exercised discretion and lowered the percentage for their sanctioning fees. Has that happened every time?
And that’s only the sanctioning fees. Add promoter cuts, management fees, training camp costs, and taxes, and the total climbs even higher.
Seen through that lens, the decision looks less like a statement and more like a simple financial choice: a fighter at the end of a long career deciding not to spend millions in fees for one final fight. Put more plainly, Usyk may simply not be interested in paying large sums for belts he no longer needs.
Sulaiman, however, sees it differently—though that’s hardly surprising. The WBC president, son of the late José Sulaimán, has long carried both the authority and the criticism that accompany boxing’s sanctioning system. His father famously refused to immediately recognize James “Buster” Douglas as undisputed heavyweight champion after his upset of Mike Tyson, a decision still remembered as one of the sport’s more controversial moments.
So it was perhaps fitting that news of Usyk relinquishing his belts reached Sulaiman not through formal channels, but via social media. From there, criticism followed—not only about the decision itself, but about Usyk not contacting the organization directly beforehand.
At this stage, Usyk owes no one an explanation beyond the one he has already given.
Sulaiman took to social media to express his frustration. “What a disappointment it is for me to learn from a social media video that our heavyweight champion is vacating his WBC title. This is the current life we live in; I thought it was AI. I personally wish Usyk great success in his life inside and outside the ring,” he wrote on X.
He wasn’t finished. In a follow-up video, he suggested Usyk was no longer the same humble fighter he once was.
“It’s hard to explain in words the feeling of opening social media and seeing the heavyweight champion of the world simply relinquishing the belt like that,” he added. “No phone call. No letter. It’s the time we’re living in.
“Boxers go through many stages. When they begin, they’re humble, hungry, and thankful. They’re loyal. Then money changes things.”
It has become a recurring pattern in which Sulaiman finds himself at the center of criticism for challenging fighters over decisions that improve their financial situation and personal freedom. He responds by gaslighting them, reframing financial disagreements and fighter autonomy as questions of respect and loyalty toward the organization.
Last year, he drew similar scrutiny after stripping Terence Crawford of the super middleweight title when he refused to pay a $300,000 sanctioning fee. As with the Usyk situation, the aftermath played out publicly, with him expressing frustration over what he viewed as a lack of communication from the fighter’s side, while suggesting Crawford had been changed by money.
“He forgot how he got to make $50 million,” he said. “It’s very unfortunate that the WBC did not even receive an acknowledgment of receipt nor anything in response to any of those communications. It’s very complicated to withdraw a title from a champion—it hurts deeply. He has been very successful, a [five-division] world champion for 13 years. It is just terrible. Not even a thank you, or ‘I’m sorry.’ No response.”
Beyond the rhetoric, the underlying issue remains the same: a sport built on fighters yet governed by institutions that benefit from their success while also taking a cut from it. There is no dispute that fighters like Crawford and Usyk are paid at the highest level boxing allows. The question is what the system believes it is owed in return.
That tension does not exist in isolation. The World Boxing Council, like other sanctioning organizations, has long operated within a landscape filled with artificial belts—diamond titles, silver titles, commemorative awards, regional belts, and interim titles that function largely outside the sport’s true world championship picture. All of these titles require sanctioning fees—rather strange coming from a “non-profit” organization.
The commemorative belts are particularly notable. In 2019, former heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, who is British, defeated Otto Wallin in Las Vegas and was subsequently awarded the WBC “Mayan Belt,” a ceremonial design tied to Mexican cultural heritage. Fury had to pay for that for no apparent reason.
The organization’s decision-making has also drawn criticism for inconsistency, particularly in how it allows some fighters to retain titles through inactivity or circumstance while stripping others, and how certain situations appear to receive more flexible treatment than others.
Oscar Rivas was the inaugural bridgerweight champion and held the belt until 2023, despite not fighting again after winning it in 2021. Jermall Charlo held the middleweight title through a period of inactivity that stretched beyond 1,000 days before his eventual removal following legal issues. In another case, Stephen Fulton missed weight by two pounds for a scheduled challenge against O’Shaquie Foster’s junior lightweight title last year. Instead of putting the title on the line for Foster only—or scrapping the fight altogether—the sanctioning body sanctioned it as a bout for the “interim” 135-pound title, so as not to miss a chance to collect that fee.
That inconsistency also shows up in higher-profile situations. In 2024, efforts to stage an undisputed light heavyweight fight between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol were blocked by Sulaiman, who would not allow Bivol to fight for the WBC title held at the time by Beterbiev due to Bivol’s Russian nationality. When it was pointed out that Beterbiev is also Russian, he suggested—somewhat controversially—that Beterbiev was not Russian because he lived in Canada. This suggested that Bivol, who is half Korean, would need to relocate to Seoul or another country to be eligible to fight for the belt, and would, of course, have to pay for it after the fact. The controversy grew as eligibility decisions appeared to shift depending on context and enforcement.
Taken together, these cases point to a system where enforcement and discretion often appear uneven, depending on the fighter, the circumstances, and the interests involved.
Sulaiman’s reaction to Usyk fits the mold. At its core, the issue is not just communication or protocol, but control—who gets to define the terms when a fighter steps away.
Oleksandr Usyk made a decision about his own career. Mauricio Sulaiman responded as he often does—through frustration, gaslighting, and feigned emotional outrage.
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